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Published
in Gulf News, March 27, 2007
The baby boy
blues
Last
time, I wrote about the dangers of being less than one hour late
for my neighbour's baby-naming ceremony, but didn't touch upon the
other big danger that evening: the baby.
Whenever
babies are spotted, or even mentioned, my wife's eyes light up.
I, in contrast, get a hunted look and started counting steps to
the emergency exits. My good friend, married just a month before
I was, is at the same stage. But he has defused the issue by buying
a lovely pedigree golden retriever called Ruff. I still have to
rely on the glazed eyes and sudden deafness that I use to ward off
everything from "We need to vacuum the carpet" to "Let's
talk about the future".
You'd
think that agreeing to attend a baby-naming ceremony is like offering
to do the grocery shopping in a Tikrit market, but it actually makes
little difference. My wife's infant-detecting skills are military
issue. We'll be sitting at restaurant and she'll suddenly say, "Oh
isn't that baby cute!"
I'll
look around and see no human young whatsoever in the vicinity, upon
which she'll point out of the restaurant window, through the branches
of the fern outside, across the parking lot, round the pillars and
down the corridor of the next building where there'll be the faint
dot that, to my eyes, could be a baby, could be a blue swaddled
poodle.
And
of course, what comes next is some form of the question: "Would
you like one of those?". My stock answers feature anything
from belligerence ("What's wrong with a dog?") to frantic
misdirection ("Oh look! A cloud!") to abject pretend stupidity
("A blue baby blanket? What would I want a blue baby blanket
for?")
If
my best friend is around, we usually start making horrible jokes
that involve, variously, free labour, barbecues and child-powered
vacuum cleaners. But the more cruel the jokes, the wider the indulgent
smiles on the wives' faces. They both know that the bluster completely
fails to hide two future overindulgent fathers. For all our reticence,
my friend and I are pretty clear about what sort of children we
want, and boys aren't on the list. After all, we were boys once
(and, most of the time, still are) and so we know first-hand just
what horrors they can be. My friend is far more vociferous than
I am, because he had a sister and was able to make many direct comparisons.
One
of his favourite examples is how his idea of "quality time"
at home with the parents was simply being under the same roof. It
didn't matter that he was closeted in his room with Chris Rea blaring
all evening, and that he emerged only to answer questions in grunts
over dinner. His sister, by contrast, considered quality time to
be regaling the parents with stories of her day, watching television
with them and continuing the happy conversation over dinner. My
poor parents, with two boys in the house, had no-one to balance
this out. (Please feel free to be outraged by the gratuitous generalisations
- I'd love to hear that there's a chance in case my prayers aren't
answered.)
But
after just two minutes of conversation on these lines, either my
friend or I will say, "Why on earth are we talking about children?"
and we'll quickly start to arm-wrestle or barbecue a leg of lamb
or install a turbo-charger in the nearest car.
Of
course, none of this bravado fools the wives. If we're brutally
honest, it doesn't fool the husbands either. Boys try very hard
to be boys, but don't always succeed.
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